Fancy Tools for Tracking the Flu

The Internet and other technologies are transforming the way health officials track how diseases are spread. Rather than rely on doctors’ reports to public-health agencies, the hope is that these other means, which include patients voluntarily reporting symptoms via the Web, will allow for faster collection of this data, dubbed “infodemiology” by some experts, according to the Washington Post.

We’ve written before about Google’s Flu Trends, whose purpose is to map flu outbreaks by tracking internet searches for key words like “flu” and “fever.” Now there’s a new cellphone application called Outbreaks Near Me, launched yesterday by HealthMap.

“If you move into a zone where there’s an outbreak, your phone would actually alert you,” John Brownstein, assistant professor of pediatrics at Children’s Hospital in Boston, where HealthMap is based, told the Post.

Several countries have set up Internet-based flu reporting centers, including Australia, Italy, the U.K. and the Netherlands. And in Singapore, the Post reports, is testing a system called FluLog that uses Bluetooth technology to find people who have been in close contact to someone who was infected.

Some of these applications raise questions about privacy, and none will replace more in-depth surveys and tests conducted by public health agencies like the CDC. “You’re always going to have to have this verified against a system that’s physician-based,” Ashley Fowlkes, an epidemiologist with the CDC, told the Post. “It’ll always be a nice adjunct to current surveillance systems and … may serve as an early warning system.”

Comments (1 of 1)

Isn´t this exactly what they want us to behave: See an enemy behind every tree, don´t shake hands with nowbody, dont´hug your friends and family any more,run for the first shot of vaccine (that could even kill you or leave you worse then wihtout), lock yourself up at home and stuff the window and door junctions in order not to get infected by the swine flu, simply to become paranoic about all this hysteria of pandemic disease (that in fact is less lethal then the commun flu!)?
Baxter, WHO and the governments are happy about such obedient citizen. They pay (and make the pharma industry some billions heavier) and do what the authorities (driven by the industry) ask them to do. We don´t need any more our civil rights - because citizens handed over already their brain to the governments. So please go on to register for the celular tracking system - you will feel happy to get warned about your neighbors infection risk while sitting in the bath tub. That´s quality of life!